SAN DIEGO — All my life I wanted to be someone notable. To date, the only mention of me is in the tennis record books with an asterisk next to my name that states; “Introduced tennis elbow into New Zealand.” I achieved this notoriety when my tennis group hosted a group of touring Kiwi players and one bought my wide-body racket. These were brand new on the market, but far too stiff for me, and gave me a ferocious sore elbow.
I needed some other recognition. Some Black kids dream of being the next Michael Jordan, geeks set their eyes on the Nobel Prize, and gorgeous chicks primp like Julia Roberts. To me it didn’t matter. I would have eaten the largest pastrami sandwich in the world to get into the record books, if a guy with a detached jaw wasn’t already the record holder.
Finally it happened. On an overseas trip, I achieved worldwide fame as the oldest person in New Guinea! How did I arrive at this conclusion? The same precise way all scientific statistics are gathered in this primitive land of six-million betel nut chewing, red-mouthed folks. I observed, talked to people, and asked questions.
My curiosity was first aroused when I noticed the absence of a single wheel chair. Nobody walked with a cane or crutch, not a single person. When I asked where the lame were, I was told they were cared for by their relatives in their villages. I discredited this claim after visiting many villages and never seeing anything but healthy young people. Therein lay the truth. The indigenous population didn’t live that long! The high end mortality age is fifty-six. I backed up my suspicions by asking the oldest looking people how old they were. One gent I thought might be in his seventies said he was forty-six. Whew! Some folks replied that they didn’t know how old they were. So that makes me older than all the local folks. What about the tourists? The greatest concentration of us, about seventy-five men and women, were at the colorful, annual Goroka Sing-Sing Dance Festival. I looked at the gathering of the white-faced, LL Bean-draped, khaki-clad crowd, and noted that most of them where in their 30s. They were still young and fit enough to be adventurous, to journey to this remote, primitive, and some times dangerous land. The oldest among them was a 65-year old psychiatrist from New York and his younger wife. I therefore conclusively, and without hesitation, proudly claimed the title, then at 74 years of age, as the oldest man in the Country.
The island of New Guinea is the second largest island in the world. It lies just north of Australia. The barely inhabited western half of the island, is owned by Indonesia and named Irianjaya. The eastern half of the island, independent since 1975, is called Papua New Guinea. During the Second World War, the island was the battleground for some of the most horrific fighting on land, sea, and air. The Japanese abandoned 160,000 of their occupying soldiers to die of hunger, disease, and battle at the end of the War, having no way to transport them off the island. During my stay, I visited both Japanese and American rusting wrecks and structures
The national language is Pidgin English. It evolved from the Australian and U.S military as a method to communicate with the indigenous people, who had no common language, and spoke over 800 dialects.
People kept asking me why I wanted to go there. Very few people I spoke to knew where in the world it was located.
I must confess I was a bit apprehensive about the adventure, but was compelled by its remoteness, a fascination with a land that bred the Cargo Cult, and the prospect of gathering some exotic masks to add to my collection over over 300 pieces.
About the Cargo Cult. During World War II, the allies parachuted hundreds of tons of equipment, supplies, and paraphernalia into encampments where there were no landing strips. The native people, who had never seen airplanes before, thought a God was supplying the allied soldiers with the necessary materials to defeat the enemy. They hated the Japanese who treated them cruelly during the occupation. One remote village I visited thought the first airplane they ever saw or heard was a giant bird. When the war ended victoriously for the Allies, most of the materials and supplies were left in place, too expensive to haul out. The natives reaped the rewards of this bounty, and erected tall towers to climb and pray for the return of the God and his bounty. Thus the name “Cargo Cult.” I asked if it still existed, and was told that, only recently, it seemed to be dying out.
I arrived on the island in one of the most dangerous cities on Earth, Port Moresby. Although I had absolutely no problems, I felt comforted having at least two or three guides and bodyguards with me wherever I went. The hotels, restaurants, and businesses were gated, guarded, and topped by barbed wire. An executive I met who managed a company with seven hundred employees told me the police are the bad ones. They stop cars indiscriminately at night and drunkenly shake down the occupants of the vehicle for beer money. He said, “If you are in an accident, you never stop, but keep on going to the police station to report it.” However, two Dutch brothers I met on the trip had a favorable experience with the police. They were about to leave the country when the tour operator decided to renege on an agreement to pay a $600 hotel bill. At the last moment before leaving the island, the brothers went to the police, who were sympathetic to their story. Burly cops with automatic machine guns went to the office compound of the tour operator, sounded their siren, and brought him back to the police station to tell his story. The police sided with the brothers, and the tour operator was escorted to his bank to withdraw the money he owed and hand it over to them. One hour later, they departed on a plane for home.
The plant manager and his wife lived in a high, walled executive compound with 24-hour armed security. He mentioned, “White people don’t ever go to a hospital. They usually fly to Australia two hours away for medical attention.” One employee’s wife was too sick to leave, and had to stay in the hospital overnight. Her husband slept under her bed to prevent her from being raped.
Although I was traveling alone, I had made some booking arrangements with a local tourist agency. There are very few roads, so I took seven flights on mostly single engine aircraft with erratic flight schedules. While waiting at one grass strip, I fed nine people gathered around me. Total cost $2.00 We gorged on banana’s, hard tack, beef-flavored crackers, and roasted peanuts, flushed from the pants pockets of the fellow I sent to buy food.
New Guinea is called “The land of the unexpected,” and it surely is. The telephone service was erratic and went down several times per day, as did the internet (available only in hotels). There was a bizarre cell phone situation. There were two companies, and they didn’t talk to each other. If you had a Telecom phone and the other person had Digicel, they would not connect.
The government had a reputation of extreme corruption. The primary airline, Air Niugini, was the Marx Brothers airline. They didn’t take credit cards. Imagine an airline flying international routes to Australia and Singapore and not accepting a credit card. Having a confirmed reservation meant absolutely nothing, as I found out twice trying to depart Moresby for Goroka. Interesting experience. I was in the ticketing area room. An estimated 500 people were waiting in line or milling about. I was not only the oldest person in the room, I was also the only White person. Now I know what a Black person in the Salt Lake City Airport must feel like. Although I had confirmed reservations, I couldn’t get out that day, and the next morning, with a new confirmed reservations in hand, was told it was no good. After some heavy browbeating by my guide, who, fortunately, had previously worked for the airline for ten years, the pilot said he would see if he had enough weight allowance left for me after the refueling was completed. After some nail-biting minutes, I was granted a boarding pass. Off we went, only to make a 180-degree turn around immediately after take off, and land again, The pilots thought they felt something bump on take off. I thought it was only a wind gust. However, they cautiously had the plane checked out, and found nothing wrong. They even inspected the runway for debris. We took off again without incident.
I sat next to Tony Ila, who had just graduated from dental school. He was about to start a two-year residency. He told me there were only 20 dentists and one oral surgeon in all of Papua New Guinea. Education is neither free nor compulsory in PNG. Tony’s parents were subsistence farmers who lived off the land in the jungle. An uncle who worked in a gold mine financed his schooling. He had to walk eight hours through the jungle to get to the village where he attended boarding school. I sat in the last row, which seated four abreast, like the rear of a bus. While Tony and I talked, the woman next to me cracked chewing gum loudly in my ear. It was terrible. She didn’t stop chewing until we landed. I didn’t know you could crack gum that loud. I tried putting fingers in my ear, but nothing worked. Does Medicare pay for hearing aids if you are deafened by chewing gum crackling?
Fifty percent of the children go to school. The other 50 percent cannot read or write. Seventy-five percent of the people are unemployed and just hang around. The average employed person gets about $2.00 per day in wages.
We landed in Goroka. Mr. Gopsy, an anti-guide who was to meet me, was not there. After a frantic 20 minutes of trying to find out where he was, he unceremoniously showed up with no apology. I got into his car, which had a cracked windshield, and he immediately opened and ate a chocolate bar without even acknowledging my presence. Only after he was finished eating did he begin to speak. For the next two days, we stopped three times for food for Gopsy, once for a spare tire, and a third time to buy sweet potatoes and yams for his pigs.
Goroka is in the Highlands. I spent a whole day attending the annual Sing-Sing. It’s a competition where tribes from all over the hills parade, sing, and dance on a vast grass field. In the past, the prizes were pigs, the most valued commodity on the island. In recent years, money was the reward. There was a viewing grand stand, but the tourists were let out onto the field right from the beginning to photograph, pose and dance with the tribal people. There were at least 15 different groups, all dressed in elaborate, and sometimes strange, regalia. They were festooned with bird feathers, native shell jewelry, and necklaces made from animal jaws and beetles. The revelers faces were painted with brilliant primary colors, white mud, or black paint.
From Goroka, I was driven on a six-hour journey to Madang, on the coast. There were five of us in the vehicle- myself, the driver, my bodyguard, Gopsy, who was 46, and his 10-year-old brother-in-law.
A note about my bodyguard. We stopped for bottled water at a paper-strewn town. Mr. Gopsy went in for water and candy. I was instructed to stay in the vehicle. The muscled body guard got out and stood looking around in all directions, acting like secret service men guarding the president.
We visited a remote part of the jungle where a downed, twin engine Japanese bomber wreck lay. None of my escorts had ever been there and there were no directional signs. We came upon an old man who said he owned the land where the wreck was and he would take us there. He appeared quite old, but said he didn’t know his age. His wife seemed about one-third his age. The airplane wreck was in great shape. He probably kept the area cleared for tourists to see it. No money was requested. There is no tipping in PNG.
On the resort grounds, there was a large grass hut where local artifacts were for sale. The masks and other interesting stuff were displayed in dim light on tables placed in a U shaped pattern. Several women owned portions of the artifacts, and they lived and slept under the tables, some with children nursing at their breasts. When I inquired about the price of an unmarked artifact, I poked my head under the table to ask the woman who owned it. The negotiations were done while she remained underneath, and I paid her without her getting up.
The next day I flew in a packed six-seat single engine plane to Simbai, a place with no roads. The plane landed on a small grass strip. One hundred or so people were hanging around. We were one of two airplanes arriving there daily. We were the big event of the day. I was greeted by a number of people including Philip, one of my guides who walked seven hours to meet the plane. He grabbed my bag and off we trekked. We marched for an hour, to the Kalum Cultural Center. This was a couple of Sago Palm, woven-wall huts with grass roofs. I reunited with the two Dutch brothers who were taking photographs for a book of people of PNG faces. They were wonderful guys and we got along very well.
We set off together, accompanied by four men, for a two-hour up hill trek to a school and village. We arrived at the primary school first. There were several kids with white mud smeared over their bodies. I had seen some adults also smeared with mud on the hike from the airport. This indicated they were in mourning for the death of someone in their family. They wear the mud for a month.
Some other kids were in costume and seemed overjoyed by our visit. None of the children had ever heard an airplane or seen an automobile. Back in our huts, we had a great dinner, and about 7:30 p.m. went to sleep. We slept in our clothes, There was no water or electricity, nor any women to tell us how much we stank.
It’s a two-day walk through the jungle to either Madang or Mt. Hagen. Two of our guides had done it numerous times. The next morning, I was awakened at 3 a.m. by the chopping of wood. I got up and wrote in my journal by flashlight. We slept in individual rooms in the guesthouse, separated by woven palm walls. Eric’s bed was just on the other side of my wall, and he farted thunderously all night long. The floors were made of woven palm and it felt like we were walking on a trampoline. The next day, we walked to another village, where we were `guests of a native Anglican priest, Father Samson, who met me in a badly torn T-shirt. We were there to watch the initiation of three 16-year-old boys into manhood, PNG’s version of a bar mitzvah. The afternoon’s activity was the clubbing to death of four pigs, which I could have done without, but the 50 or so villagers observing the slaughter loved it. The women skinned and butchered the animals, decapitated the heads, and prepared a luau, called a “moo-moo.” They layered the pit with palm leaves and mixed vegetables with the slices of pig. The last layer of covering was hot rock, used to steam the roast. An hour and a half later it was done, and the cooked pork was eaten with gusto. The heads were buried separately, to be consumed by the acolytes the following morning at the conclusion of the ceremony.
The revelry began in the evening at 8.30 p.m. Nine women from our village, dressed in exquisite costumes, painted faces, and draped with jewelry, began chanting and dancing simple steps in a repetitive cadence. A half hour later, a rather large group of men in vastly more elaborate regalia appeared with drums, beating, marching, and chanting. They came from the village we had visited the day before. The men got dressed in their own village, marched barefoot the entire mile-and-a-half in the dark, and sang to the cadence of the drumbeat until they arrived at the ceremonial area. There they joined the women and both of the groups danced and sang until eight the next morning. What is most remarkable is that the entire ceremony was performed without drugs or alcohol! At the conclusion of the dancing the boys, who were secluded for the past three weeks being instructed in the virtues of manhood by the elders in a woven hut, chopped down the wall of their enclosure. Then they joined the marchers and were led off to another location to consume the pig’s head. This last ritual was symbolic of their acquiring the strength of manhood. The men from the other village then left, marching and singing their way back home.
The Dutch brothers and I stayed for the first hour of the ceremony, went to sleep, and returned at five the next morning to observe and film the conclusion of this remarkable event. There is no way the Western mind can identify with this experience. Hari Krishna hypnotic chanting doesn’t even come close. Nightfall and the dark didn’t seem to bother these people. In the moonlight, they pursue and kill with bow and arrow or spear a nocturnal rodent about the size of a raccoon called a Couscous. The yellow fur of the animal is used for adornment on their costumes and the jaw and teeth for necklaces.
There was some question when my plane would arrive to take me to Mt. Hagen, my next destination. I was told to trek down to the grass strip at 8.30 a.m. and wait for the other plane. I was kept company by my coterie of guides and assorted other gents. The plane arrived six hours later at 2.30 p.m. The weigh-in for the flight was done with a small beat-up bathroom scale. I stepped on the scale, holding my luggage.
After take-off, climbing out of the bowl-like enclosure of the mountains, the pilot made several banking turns, circling and climbing as he turned, until we had enough altitude to clear the mountaintop by about two hundred feet. No need to worry about telephone or electric wires. There weren’t any.
Mr. Phym picked me up at the Mt. Hagen airport, and drove an hour and a half through the rain to Magic Mountain He owned five grass huts that are reached by enduring a hairy, slippery, dangerous road to his lair. Walking down a muddy, slippery pathway, I reached my hut. It was primitive, but dry. It even had its own indoor bathroom, which was refreshing. I was the only one staying there. My agent had booked for three nights-to save himself money. I stayed one night and booked myself into the only decent hotel in the town of Mt. Hagen for the other two nights. I stayed out of the market, where some tourists had recently been robbed by machete wielding bandits.
Mr. Phym, a delightful man, took me to two villages. Each one had a spirit house. One house had several skulls of past chiefs and honored warriors. Villagers still pray to them, even though they are now Christians, for strength and guidance, In another spirit house, he showed me smooth round rocks the size of bowling balls that the people also worship superstitiously in the old ways. The ceremonies I have described are all meant to preserve tribal traditions for their children.
We had been driving in the countryside. there was hardly any traffic, and everyone we passed, waved or called out to us. Mr. Phym said, “The people probably think you are a priest.” It was Sunday. I blessed some of them with two slightly curved fingers as I have seen the Pope do. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, “It’s great to be the Pope.”
At my guide’s village, I was introduced to the chief and three of his four wives, all adorned in costumes. The eldest one was the boss, and keeps the others in line. At this village, the men dressed like Asaro Mud Men and performed the slow, unique, prancing walk for me that I had seen at the Goroka show.
I found out there are three kinds of ex-pats(White people) who move to PNG: missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits. I met more missionaries than any of the others. They all had an innocent starry-eyed gaze in their eyes, signifying they were doing God’s work by civilizing the “savages.” A Canadian airline pilot, who took early retirement to “Answer God’s call,” flew me to the next destination. He flies for the missionary-owned airline without pay.
On the next flight, I sat next to a New Zealand graduate school student doing a two month economic survey for his school. He lived in the villages for free. They fed him as they did any guest. He said it was impossible to do statistical analysis because of the difficulties of reaching people in remote areas. Surveys are all hearsay from villagers and other business people.
We landed up-hill on a hairy 1200-foot grass strip The airplane was a two-engine turboprop plane with beat-up seats. On a hill rise above were hundreds of natives viewing us like a baseball game. They were prevented from entering the air field by a fence, along with fierce looking machete wielding security guards. We dropped off passengers and cargo and took off again. The pilot revved up the engines to maximum power, then let go of the brakes and in about 600 feet going steeply down hill, we broke ground clearing the mountains on either side by a few hundred feet. After an hour’s flight, we landed on a concrete runway at Wewak, and I met up with the Dutch brothers for the third time. The three of us flew off in a single engine missionary airplane piloted by the Canadian volunteer. We landed on the grass at Timbumke missionary station on the Sepik River.
Six of us, with all our luggage and provisions, climbed into a 50-foot-long dugout canoe hewn out of a single log. It was powered by a 40-horsepower outboard motor. We cruised to a village where all the people carved masks. I was in heaven and bought several. We then cruised for 3 1/2 hours up river, to our destination. We stayed in a hut on stilts. I had a bed and mosquito net. At each location, my agent told the guides, “An old man was coming, take special care of him.” Several times I was asked if I was okay. They were surprised how good a shape I was in. Tennis matches four times per week had paid off. We used the usual outdoor “thunder hole” for a toilet. Leon, the younger of the Dutch brothers called it, “Sending a fax.” The temperature was warm, not as hot as Madang, but incredibly humid. The Sepik is where Malaria mosquitos roam. I was wearing Buzz-off clothing impregnated with insect repellant` and it seemed to be working. I was not bitten once, just pestered sometimes by nasty Kamikaze flies.
The first evening, we had a discussion with Chris, our guide, about crocodiles that inhabited the river. Chris said, “They’d catch one tomorrow and we’ll have it for dinner.” True to his word, they caught one and we feasted on marinated and barbecued Croc. It was outstanding. No, it did not taste like chicken. With the Croc, we had sautéed tulip leaves for greens and coconut rice. Delicious!
The two days on the Sepik were filled with visits to various villages on both sides of the river and to spirit houses. The two-story spirit houses were huge and filled with men, initiate boys, and many masks for sale. The Sepik is known as the best place for artifacts.
After visiting many villages, I observed that the villages were spotlessly clean and well kept, with closely clipped grass. The towns were a different story-trash everywhere. Paradoxically, Bali and the Amazon villages I visited were also strewn with trash.
After 16 days in remote villages I’ve observed that the people have not developed any human engineering skills. By that I mean, paths, steps, waterfront docks, and small bridges are incidental and unimportant in their lives. For my Dutch buddies and me, it meant treacherous stepping and we often needed assistance, perhaps because we wore shoes and they were barefoot.
To summarize my experience I found an innocent primitive people, who have been somewhat pacified and Christianized by a coterie of missionaries of every persuasion. The zealots, have for the most part, stopped the perennial warring among tribes in the highlands. There is considerable robbery in certain areas, particularly if a person is suspected of having money. A White woman woman I met in Goroka, who was raised in PNG, lives in my area of California, earning money by importing artifacts. She told me, “I’ve had been robbed eleven times in the past, because everyone knows I carry a lot of cash to buy artifacts in the villages.” She said. “Now I always carries a loaded 38m. pistol with me.”.
The indigenous people are stuck in the midst of two cultures, each pulling at them in opposite directions. A culture that goes to church on Sunday, yet still worships stones and are fans of Johnny Depp, the movie star of The Pirates of the Caribbean..
The vigorous missionaries are hard at work saving souls and ruining a culture, a rich society that has, over the millennia, created imaginative artifacts, masks, costuming, and rituals to reflect their lives. Why can’t we leave them alone?
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Ira Spector is a freelance writer based in San Diego. This selection, with slight revisions, was republished from Spector’s 2011 work, Sammy Where Are You? An Unconventional Memoir … Sort of. It is available via Amazon.